Word.ws English Dictionary

Lapita

Lapita proper noun: an ancient material culture of Oceania who may have spoken Proto-Oceanic and were the ancestors of many modern peoples in the region.

Proper noun

Lapita

  1. An ancient material culture of Oceania who may have spoken Proto-Oceanic and were the ancestors of many modern peoples in the region.

Origin of Lapita

Coined 1952 by Edwin Gifford from Haveke xapeta'a (“place where one digs a hole”), believed to be in reference to archeological excavations in New Caledonia.

Questions about Lapita

What does Lapita mean?
Lapita means an ancient material culture of Oceania who may have spoken Proto-Oceanic and were the ancestors of many modern peoples in the region.
What part of speech is Lapita?
Lapita is a proper noun.

Words near Lapita in the dictionary

  1. lapis infernalis
  2. lapis lazuli
  3. lapis lazulis
  4. lapises
  5. lapislazzuli
  6. Lapita
  7. Lapith
  8. Lapiths
  9. lapkin
  10. lapkins
  11. Lapkus

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Lapita (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Lapita.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lapita. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.